On being a cat stand

Today is my last vacation day before I head back to work. My cats seem to sense this and are making right royal pains of themselves.  Even the cat that hates sitting in a lap is trying to lie down next to me, which is very sweet for her. She is a cat that needs her personal space.

I am desperately behind in reading. Because of big bang and McShep match, I have a lot of stories on the to-read pile. I wish I had another couple of days off, just so I could dig into it in some depth. As I get around to it, stories that I have read and enjoyed are going on my delicious to-rec tag. None of the current crop of stories is up, but I hope to have some soon.

I did finish Rock, Paper (No Scissors) yesterday, and thought it was a lot of fun. It's not terribly graphic in the Hurt/comfort arena, and while I wouldn't call it majorly angsty, there is some emotional pain that people are going through.  The tone of the story is just so darn light that I never for a moment believed that it wouldn't work out, and Sheppard's internal voice is fabulous.  I wish I could get my Sheppard to be able to ignore pain like that, but alas, it is not to be. I suspect that my Sheppard tends to be on the emo side of things.

Oh!  One of the great things about being trapped in a car with my spouse and son for 500 miles was that we spent some time discussing the difference between Emo and Angst.  Shakespeare's characters tend to be more on the Emo side in that their emotional pain is visible to an outsider (or at least it was in the productions we saw.)  We compared this to the characters in "Gem of the Ocean", which is a play about African American characters in the hill district of Philadelphia Pittsburgh in 1904; it's also a tragedy in that one of the characters that we liked the most ends up dead at the end of the play.  The characters in the show still had to communicate their emotional pain to the audience, but rather than it being all open and heart-felt sighs, it was all closed up and deliberately ignored. The contrast between the two was wonderful, and kept us going for probably an hour of the ride.

"Distracted" was the third play we say, and it was the one that Lar liked best.  It is also the one that I think would make a great Kate Hewlett vehicle.  This was the second production of the play, after the author had a chance to do a little tweaking based on the first run, plus she came to Ashland and worked with both the actors and director to tune it up some more, based on their input. The story is about a woman who has to come to terms with the possibility of her son having ADHD, and what that means to her and her family.  It's incredibly funny--though most of the jokes are in the first half--and topical. (At one point, there are all of these TV screens above the stage showing what's on the news while the DSM 4 definition of ADHD is read aloud, plus the words are overlaid on the news images.  And guess whose image is up there?  *g*  So funny, as the definition so fits.)  The mom surf's the internet for information, tries out homeopathy as well as more traditional medicine, and buys shoes off zappos.com when she gets stressed.  They break the 4th wall constantly for asides to the audience, plus at one point, one of the actors 'breaks character' to talk a little about his life with ADD.  It's a great mixture of comedy and drama, with no easy solutions.  It's was also a lot of fun. 

I think that's it for now.  The cat has finally moved from my lap, so I guess it's time to warm up my tea and start my day, It's good to be back.